Overnight Trip to Bahrain

Yesterday I came over to Bahrain with someone else from the team to check it out. Bahrain is a short 30 minute drive on the King Fahad Causeway through the Arabian Gulf and a tourist spot every weekend for Saudis but you see just as many expatriots from Europe, Australia, India, Pakistan, Phillipines and NZ as you see Native Gulf Arabs. It is seems to be a preferred place of residence over Saudi for expats in the region. They are under going some impressive skyscraper construction projects in Bahrain. Follow the link to the upcoming Bahrain World Trade Center: http://muharraqi-studios.com/BAHRAIN-WORLD-TRADE-CENTER/b-after.jpg What is not show in the picture at this website are the 3 Gigantic Wind Turbines that are mounted betweeen the 3 towers, one on top of the other. It makes for a very impressive building and hints that Bahrain is not jsut about oil energy. However it was the first arabian country to find oil and was a British colony in it recent history and has done a great job with diversifying its economy to not be so oil depedendant seeing as the oil production has subsided to 65k bbl/day.

Today it capitalizes on retail, banking and beach going tourist commerce.We went for dinner at Trader Vics on the Ritz-Carolton property last night then hit up a club. Late night, didn't get home till after 2am.
The photos are a Bahraini Sunset over the Arab Gulf and the view out of my window this morning (Mom - Crown Plaza in the foreground).

Couple of other perks that draw people and me to Bahrain: the food, no "lock down" mentality on security as things are very safe over here, greater freedom for women so you actually see most of them just as you would a man on the street.So far the Saudi experience has proved to be very controlled and scheduled as risk is managed for obvious reasons.

Even though Saudi is a 45 minute causeway drive from Bahrain, they are 2 very different places.